DIRT 5 Playgrounds: Everything You Need to Know

The Playgrounds mode for DIRT 5 is a feature that’s brand new to the DIRT franchise – the ability to design, create, edit and race on your own custom racing arenas. Use a huge suite of objects – from bumps, kickers and ramps, to loops, tunnels and rings of fire – to devise the most creative and ambitious arenas for racing antics.

Conjure up the most devilish and challenging time trial runs with Gate Crasher; test the community’s skill in Smash Attack; or devise a haven for drifts and donuts with Gymkhana events. These event types can be assigned to your Playgrounds to add structure and objectives to your incredible designs – and every single creation comes with a global leaderboard, allowing you to compete against the world on any arena.

Constantly create Playgrounds and, with a press of a button, share them with the world via our in-game tools for others to test their skills in your designs. Or, use the same tools to discover other user-created Playgrounds, download them, and tear around the creations of other players. Playgrounds allows you to experience, and contribute to, a humongous selection of DIRT experiences, designed by you, the players.

That’s the summary of how you’ll experience Playgrounds in DIRT 5, but a massive mode like this has plenty more detail to break down. So, here’s everything you need to know before you create and discover new epic off-road events in Playgrounds…

 

CREATE

Imagine a blank canvas, a huge open space, where you have full control over the extreme racing action that takes place on it. Get your creative juices flowing and design the off-road event you’ve always dreamed of with Playgrounds.

Players will have the option to set their Playground in two locations – Arizona, or inside the Cape Town Stadium in South Africa. Choose your setting and you’ll be taken to your empty Playground, with a bird’s eye view of the arena to help you navigate. Once you’ve got a feel for all that, it’s time to start building your Playground.

Use the Objects option to open a massive menu of items to choose from. Build the groundworks with blocks, ramps and boxes. Add dirt areas, bumps and water spots to mix up the terrain. Drop in incredible set pieces like loops, rings of fire, or buses and wrecked vehicles to jump over. Place drift gates, donut spots and more for Gymkhana-focused arenas. Add some style and personality with decorative items, foliage and a colour editing option. The choice is completely yours with how to design your Playground.

After choosing any object, they can be rotated and placed, with clear guidance on any placement limitations. Many items can be snapped together when placing to ensure your Playgrounds keep their flow, and multiple objects can be duplicated on the fly to speed up the process. At any point during your design, you can head to the pause menu and choose ‘Test’ to jump into a car and try out the Playground for yourself.

You’ll be able to choose between three different event types to link with your Playgrounds design:

– Gate Crasher: Create incredible high-speed runs, insanely difficult routes and any time-trial based event in between with Gate Crasher. The route for players to take to successfully complete the event will be laid out by gates that you place onto the arena.

– Smash Attack: Challenge players to find and collect objects in your arena in the shortest time possible, and place penalty objects for racers to avoid at all costs!

– Gymkhana: For the first time ever, design your own Gymkhana arena for players to throw down. Place spots for drifting, donuts, jumps and more for players to accumulate points on for style, speed and flow in this time-based event.

Once you’ve chosen your event and are happy with your design, the ‘Publish’ menu will ensure your Playground is ready to go. After choosing a vehicle for the map and making sure the required objects have been added, you’ll be asked to validate the event by completing it yourself. Do that, and you can save and publish your very own off-road racing arena. Multiple Playgrounds can be designed and saved, so mix things up and let your creativity run wild.

SHARE

Creating a Playground is one thing, but what if you want to share your arenas with the world?

After creating a Playground, you’ll be given options that help you label, define and upload your arenas, so players can discover them when browsing and download it to play on. Once you’ve done that, your Playground can be uploaded to DIRT 5’s servers and hosted on our searchable database of user-generated creations.

When players find your arena, they’ll be shown its name, picture, event type, car class, arena location, your profile name, the tags you chose earlier, how many times the Playground has been played, and how many entries there are on this leaderboard. All this helps players gauge what kind of arena you’ve designed and if it’s creating a buzz in the community.

DISCOVER

Want to see how your Playgrounds stack up against the rest of the world’s? Not interested in creating, and just want to race in the incredible arenas of DIRT 5’s community? The Discover option in Playgrounds is your gateway to the most unique, varied, player-driven off-road racing experience around.

Head to the Discover menu and use all our tools to help you find the Playgrounds you’re looking for. Firstly, there’s ‘Browse’, where you’ll find a set of Playgrounds curated by the DIRT 5 team, based on their popularity. Our ‘Featured’ category will host an ever-changing selection of arenas that we recommend checking out, the ‘Popular’ section will show the arenas that have been raced on the most, and ‘Top’ will show you the highest-rated arenas. If you feel like mixing it up, there’s also ‘Lucky Dip’, which will bring you a completely random selection of Playgrounds to browse.

Looking for something more specific? Use the ‘Search’ menu to enter different criteria and find the Playground of your dreams. Use specific search terms, filter the event types, car classes, tags used, and more to drill down into the DIRT 5 database and find what works for you.

Whichever way you choose to find arenas, you can Pin any that catch your eye, which takes them to your ‘My List’ menu, creating a shortlist of all the Playgrounds you want to check out.

Found an arena you want to jump into straight away? Hit ‘Start Event’ to load up the Playground. Driving over the start line will start the event – then it’s time for you to speed through those gates, smash those objects, or nail those Gymkhana spots. Once you complete the event, the post-race screen will show your score on the global leaderboard.

There are also options after the event to retry it, or report the Playground so our moderation team can assess it. Be sure to use the Like and Dislike options to give your opinion on the Playground and affect its search stats. Finally, you’ll be presented with suggested Playgrounds with similar characteristics to the event you just played, so you can constantly jump into new and relevant events.

PLAYGROUNDS IN ACTION

Want to see what all of this looks like in DIRT 5? We gave selected media and Racing Ahead content creators access to an early demo of Playgrounds – and their reaction has been incredible. Check out the videos below for a first look at Playgrounds; we’ll also be making a playlist of gameplay on the official DIRT YouTube, so head there for more.

We are incredibly excited to bring this brand new experience in DIRT 5, that gives you the tools and the freedom to create extreme racing events exactly how you like them. Design incredible Playgrounds to be chosen in our live Featured area, and we’ll also promote the best creations on the official DIRT social channels. More items will come to DIRT 5 post-launch as well for you to drop into your Playgrounds – from decorative touches to insane obstacles.

Create. Share. Discover. That’s what Playgrounds is built around – now it’s time for you to do the building!

DIRT 5 launches on October 16 for PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4, with the Amplified Edition granting three days early access alongside a host of additional goodies. The Amplified Edition also comes with a 10% discount for players of any previous DIRT game! For PC and Xbox One, head to the game’s page on their official store for the discount – for PlayStation 4, use your console to head to the Game Hub of a previous DIRT game, where a 10% discount offer will be offered to you.

DIRT 5 also arrives on Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 later this year, with a next-gen optimised version including faster loading times, even greater performance and 120fps modes for both platforms. All players on current-gen consoles receive a FREE upgrade to the relevant next-gen version of DIRT 5, upon its launch. Head to dirtgame.com/dirt5 for all pre-order links and details.

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